French Flavoring I: The French Flag Over Texas

Texans like to include the French flag among “The Six Flags Over Texas,” but the honor
is doubtful, because the French government never controlled Texas nor governed it.

However, it did lay claim to Texas territory in 1682, when Robert Cavelier, sieur
de La Salle, a trader in Canada, traveled down the Mississippi to its mouth, and in
the name of the king of France claimed the territory drained by the river all the
way to “the mouth of the River of Palms,” the Rio Grande. And it’s true that the French
flag was flown over Texas soil after La Salle went back to France and returned with
280 persons in four ships to establish a colony. In February 1685, he landed at Matagorda
Bay on the Texas coast and set up a crude stockade, Fort St. Louis, inland on Garcitas
Creek, near present-day Vanderbilt.

It was an ill-fated venture--doomed by ship wrecks, loss of many lives and supplies,
crop failures and Indian attacks. On March 20, 1687, La Salle was assassinated by
some of his own men. When the Spanish Governor Alanso de Leon of Coahuila reached
the ruins of Fort St. Louis on April 22, 1689, he found no one. Some had wandered
away; most had been killed. Later, the Spanish governor learned what had happened
from two of La Salle’s men living among the Indians. [Richardson,IV, 19- 201